


this you can keep

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, The Gate of Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28255563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Some nights, Ed's brain is a shattered abacus and a broken balance. What if hehasn'tpaid the price?
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 17
Kudos: 398
Collections: Roy/Ed Week 2020





	this you can keep

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I sure do write a "o no nightmaer" fic once every three months or so. ~~PARKOUR!!!!!!~~ This one is a post-BH AU; Ed keeps alchemy but also gets his arm back; more details in the fic!
> 
> I'm just glad I managed to write something less than 10 freakin' thousand words long _and_ somehow leverage both [Roy/Ed Week](https://royedpalooza.tumblr.com) day 5 prompts ("cold" and [Prelude 12/21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Gsyr_0PpA), which was a terrible prompt, but I will stand by it because I'm a terrible person). XD Early Christmas miracle. 
> 
> ~~Do you ever get just a _tiny_ bit of meta in your h/c on accident and you just can't get it out with the fork?~~

He used to wonder about the practical logistics of the Gate. It _must_ occupy physical space in some capacity, because it can contain, store, and support things that have mass. It presumably has an atmosphere with sufficient oxygen for human survival—that part’s slightly more debatable, considering that one _might_ still just be breathing the air from the ordinary planet while believing oneself to be at the Gate, but Ed’s leaned towards atmosphere for a while, since it oxygenated the blood in Al’s body well enough to preserve it from necrosis.

Ed doesn’t wonder about that these days.

Ed tries not to think about it any more than he has to.

But his heart knows, his _heart_ knows what his brain tries not to; and when he turns his back or lets his guard down or allows himself to drift to sleep when he’s not so exhausted that he simply drops into the darkness like a stone—

A thousand hands; a thousand eyes. The hair stands up on his arms, prickles on the back of his neck; the silence presses in against his eardrums hard enough that his blood throbs through him, and his head aches.

The silence and the grin are almost worse than the child’s voice and the confirmation.

Almost, but not quite.

“It wasn’t enough,” the Truth says.

“It _was_ ,” Ed says, and the words rattle in his throat and scrape and bite like chunks of ice and slivers of steel. “Hohenheim gave you everything—”

“It wasn’t his bargain to make,” the Truth says. The eyeless face tilts, grinning broader still. “It was yours. What did _you_ give?”

Maybe there isn’t any air here—maybe that’s why it’s so damn cold. Maybe that’s why Ed’s hands freeze, why his knees lock, why his heart thunders, but his blood beats slower by the second, and he can’t bring himself to move.

“That’s not—how it works,” he says. “It was a trade. Fair and square. Equivalent. And that was _years_ ago. Al—he’s fine. He’s doing fine. You can’t take it back.”

The white smile widens. “Are you sure?”

A rasping fraction a voice—“Ed…”

He knows before he turns.

It wasn’t enough.

Roy’s wearing his uniform and the black coat; a part of Ed wants to look for the color bar on his chest to see if it’s incongruous, because a part of him remembers—

But Roy is holding both hands over his face—over his eyes.

Blood leaks out between his fingers, pouring down his cheeks, dripping from his jaw and his chin, rolling down the black wool of his coat in gleaming streaks.

“Ed,” Roy says. “How much is he worth?”

Ed’s voice whispers, “Everything. You know that.”

The scars on the backs of Roy’s hands redden as the stream thickens, soaking his face, seeping into his shirt collar—

“How much?” Roy says. “How much are you willing to give?”

Ed tries to reach out, but his right hand feels like lead. His feet stay rooted to the frigid white beneath him; the emptiness in every direction pins him into place—

“You can’t,” he says, grappling within himself, twisting his body back towards the leering apparition—

And its beautiful, deep, dark eyes.

“You _can’t_ ,” he chokes out; his mouth tastes like iron; the blood in his throat rises like bile. “You can’t take him; it’s not—”

“Equivalent?” the Truth says. “One life for another? But your brother’s is so valuable, and this one is almost spent.”

Roy gasps wetly, and Ed knows again without seeing it—knows that the blood’s running down his throat; knows that he’s sinking to his knees—

“You can’t,” Ed says, scrambling for the scraps of himself, “because he’s not _mine_. I can’t give something that I don’t have. He doesn’t belong to me.”

The Truth blinks at him, slow and serenely, savoring it. The corners of Roy’s eyes crinkle as it smiles.

“Are you sure?” it says.

Ed drags in a breath, and—

The _dark_ —

Thank some fucking power he doesn’t even have a name for and wouldn’t pray to if he did; thank _something_ , for the fucking darkness, just because it isn’t _white_ —

“Sorry,” Roy’s voice says softly, and Ed’s whole body goes so rigid that its immediate next impulse is to shake. “Didn’t mean to wake you; you knocked the…” The soft-dark shape pauses in the process of pulling the blankets up over Ed’s bare shoulders. “Ed, what’s—”

“Nothing,” Ed says, but the terror in him flares white-hot, and that feels dizzyingly appropriate, and it gives his desperation a direction. He slings his legs over the side of the bed, puts his feet on the floor— “Just—need to—go to the bathroom. I’ll… Go back to sleep.”

The rustling of the sheets means that Roy’s sitting up in the bed and watching carefully as Ed staggers across the room. The bastard never does what Ed tells him unless it was his own damn idea in the first place. Ed loves him for that. Ed loves him for about a million fucking things, and that’s—

The problem.

Because he _knows_ what they paid for the rest of it—for Al, for his arm, for a snowball’s chance in hell of something that they’re calling normalcy.

He didn’t pay anything for Roy. And there’s no such thing as _free_.

The rest of it—he stumbles near the doorway, and he hears the blankets shift a little more, but he catches himself with his still-too-delicate-some-days right hand, curling his fingers around the doorframe to hold himself up—

It must be three in the fucking morning, and Roy’s more worried about Ed’s fumbling, swallowed-scream panic than his goddamn beauty sleep.

How much does Ed owe for _this_ , to the cold grin and the emptiness?

What’s the price of being loved?

He feels his way along the bathroom wall and hits the switch.

The whole bathroom lights up blindingly bright—white walls, white tiles, white cabinets, wide silver mirror redoubling all of it—

And Ed just manages to brace both hands against the countertop before his right knee gives out.

“ _Ed_ ,” Roy says. It seems like an improbably brief series of heartbeats before Roy’s hands flit around his shoulders, grazing his back, smoothing his hair. “Breathe. Are you all right? What—”

“I’m fine,” Ed says, keeping his voice low so that it won’t betray him.

Roy’s hand settles on the back of his neck. Warm enough to be real; warm enough to feel safe, but what if— “You’re shaking.”

“I’m just cold,” Ed says. He doesn’t dare to look into the mirror, but if he turns the lights off again, Roy will figure it out. Bastard’s too smart by half—by three-quarters. Ed loves him for that, too, even when it’s really damn inconvenient.

“All right,” Roy says, voice so light that it doesn’t even sound conciliatory. It’s a talent that he’s honed to an edge so fine that it hardly hurts when it cuts you. “That much we can fix.” His hand chafes gently up and down Ed’s back for another second before he ghosts away, and Ed has to fight the throat-closing terror and the accompanying urge to reach after him so that he can’t _leave_ —

But Roy just crosses to the bed, pulls off the thickest blanket, and returns to drape it over Ed like a cape. Then he goes and gets his bathrobe, which he shoulders his way into; and then he comes back again and takes Ed’s right hand in his.

Bastard always remembers that that one’s slightly more sensitive and tries to take advantage of it.

Roy tugs very gently. “Come on downstairs. I’ll make you some tea.”

Ed hates the way that the sudden despair drags on him, like chains and cobwebs trailing. “It’s the middle of the fucking night, Roy. You have to go to work tomorrow.”

“So do you,” Roy says. “And neither of us is going to get any sleep if you go on feeling like this.” He smiles. In the midst of all of this, he _smiles_. Warm and tired and genuine and fucking gorgeous. “The longer you resist, the longer it’ll take. How’s that for coercion?”

“Great,” Ed says. “And you know it. But I’m not gonna pay you for that shit like the idiots you work for.”

“The entire nation-state of Amestris, you mean?” Roy says, drawing him out of the bedroom and towards the stairs. “Good. More money for midnight tea.”

“It’s not midnight,” Ed says. He doesn’t have to check Roy’s too-tall and annoyingly fragile grandfather clock on the way down; he can taste it. He knows exactly how thickly every hour of the morning lingers in his mouth.

“Close enough,” Roy says. He deposits Ed in one of the chairs at the kitchen table and goes to fuss around with the kettle. “There’s some of the chamomile that Al gave us left. Is that all right?”

Nothing is all right; nothing ever has been or will be. The phrase is a deliberate impossibility.

Roy knows that. He offers it anyway, like it’s a promise instead of a platitude.

“Yeah,” Ed says. He pulls the blanket in a little closer around himself. “Thanks.”

Roy puts the water in the kettle and the kettle on the stovetop and then… leans back against the counter. He doesn’t fold his arms—he rests his elbows on the countertop and leans back on them.

He doesn’t ask.

Ed gives him however many minutes that it takes for the water to boil, and the kettle to start to steam; however long after that that it takes for Roy to pull down the tin of tea and the infuser that Al gave him that’s in the shape of a little cat, with a mesh body and tiny metal paws that hang on the edge of your cup.

Roy doesn’t ask. He doesn’t push. He just portions out the tea leaves and pours the water and grabs down a saucer and brings everything over to the table, where he sets them down in front of Ed. He sits down in the chair opposite, and pushes out one of the empty ones so that he can put his feet up.

Ed watches the water in the cup darkening to a soothing shade of yellow—slightly more orange right around the little cat. He nudges it to distribute the diffusion more evenly. Roy brought him a spoon.

“When Hohenheim died for Al,” Ed says, carefully, “do you… Do you feel like that was fair? Was that equivalent enough?”

He can feel that Roy is looking at him for a long, long moment while he pushes the little cat all the way around the rim of his mug.

“Well,” Roy says, very softly, “let’s think about it mathematically.”

Ed just fucking _loves_ him, and it _hurts_ —

“Exactly what was he trying to obtain?” Roy asks. “Al’s soul, and Al’s body. Right?”

Ed swallows twice. “Yeah.”

“And precisely what was he giving?” Roy asks. “The… remainder of his life—I suppose the length of that was slightly disputable, but he did throw _his_ body in with the deal. And the unquantifiable amount of knowledge and experiences that he took with him. And—”

“And a crap-ton of souls,” Ed says. He doesn’t want to think about it; can’t yet; he and Hohenheim could have… they could have had something. Could have been something, built something. Maybe. If Hohenheim had stayed.

But if he _had_ , then Al—

If Ed had just been smart enough, been fast enough; if he’d just—thought of something _else_ —

“Exactly,” Roy says. “About how many souls do you think it was?”

Ed runs his fingertip back and forth along the side of the mug. It’s nice to be able to feel it. But he would have given it up; he would have given _any_ of it up. “I dunno. He spent a lot of them in that fight. And before. I think… I mean, I figure he was probably down to just a couple by then.”

“And his own,” Roy says.

Ed glances up at him. Roy is still sitting back in his chair, casually, with one arm resting on the chair back, and one elbow on the table.

“There’s nothing equivalent to the value of a soul,” Roy says, “except, presumably, _another_ soul. Even if we consider that Al’s is worth significantly more than the average, run-of-the-mill essence of a human being—”

The tiny pearly bubble of a laugh shivering in Ed’s throat feels so… good.

“ _Significantly_ ,” he says.

“Yes,” Roy says. “But your father gave his. And likely a couple others. And the wisdom of the ages, and the unwritten history of Xerxes, and the time that he would have had to set some wrong things right, and so on and so forth. And he traded his body more or less one-to-one for Al’s.” Roy leans forward, catches one of the little kitty paws protruding from Ed’s mug, and lifts the infuser out to set it aside on the saucer. “So it sounds to me like— _logically_ speaking—he got the raw end of the deal.”

Ed curls his five toes and then all ten fingers. He swallows again.

“Huh,” he says.

“I’ve spent less time there than you have, certainly,” Roy says, very quietly, “but it seems to me that the exchanges take place all at once. No second-guessing, no second chances, no rationalizing, and no renegotiations. If it’s done, then it’s done.”

Ed watches the steam curling up from the surface of the tea and turns that over—once, twice, three times, four. Clean angles on that one. Smooth facets. Difficult to put a hole in. Might do more damage to your finger than to the structure if you try, especially if your fingers are made of something relatively soft.

Ed extends his right hand across the table to knit his fingers up with Roy’s, and picks up the mug with his left.

“Then it’s done,” he says.

He’s going to have to ask Al where the tea came from. He’s feeling a lot less… well, a lot more settled as he and Roy troop back on up the stairs. A lot warmer, inside and outside. A lot more stable. A lot more whole.

Roy makes him brush his teeth even though it was just flower tea and not the leaded stuff. It’s probably pushing three thirty. Roy’s going to regret this in the morning—the real morning; the less-liminal one. Roy might already regret it. Roy might already regret a lot of things; Roy might—

Be catching his shoulder gently as he moves to lie down in the bed.

“One more thing,” Roy says. “Stay still. Close your eyes.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Ed says, but curiosity makes him do it anyway, which is a _colossal_ pain.

“I’m not sure I ever was,” Roy says, “except on the paperwork. And you know how I feel about that.” The fingertips of both of his hands graze Ed’s jaw, and then the air shifts as he leans in, and he presses a kiss to each of Ed’s eyelids in turn. “There.”

Ed opens his eyes again cautiously, not that he can see much more than a silhouette against the deeper dark. “What was that?”

“It’s something that my mother used to do,” Roy says, and Ed goes much stiller now than when he was ordered to. They’ve been doing this whole together-couple-thing for three years. Roy’s only mentioned her twice. “It’s supposed to protect you. Prevents the bad dreams from finding their way in.”

Ed takes a breath. Roy’s palm lingers against the side of his neck, and Ed can feel his heartbeat—warm, solid, strong. “Does it work?”

“I don’t remember,” Roy says. “It was a long time ago.”

And Ed wonders, now—

If maybe what you _are_ is what you’ve given. If maybe all the shit you fought through to make it here, all the things you tried to do and prove and make, all the ways that you worked out to be more and better even when you didn’t quite know how—

Maybe everything that you’ve put in to getting this far was the cost of it.

Maybe you don’t pay for love because you earn it with the way you live.

So maybe he’s done all right.

“That’s fair,” he says. He reaches out to run his hand through Roy’s hair in the dark. “I guess it’s worth a shot.”


End file.
